how do i send my macbook pro in for repairs?

my macbook pro has recently been running really slowly in both regular Mac OS and bootcamp windows 7, yesterday the windows partition ceased functioning entirely. Unfortunatly i live in an area in the U.S. that has no apple store (shocking, i know), so the only way i have to get it repaired is to send it in the mail, but i can't seem to find that function in the support area. I do have applecare, although i don't entirely know if that covers this.

i have been using macs long enough to recognize the effects of heat damage on a mac.

just for reference, it took me 2 hours to navigate to a 2kb .txt file and transfer it to a flash drive